The Undercover Economist

Author of the extremely popular "Dear Economist" column in Financial Times, Tim Harford reveals the economics behind everyday phenomena in this highly entertaining and informative book. Can a book about economics be fun to read? It can when Harford takes the reins, using his trademark wit to explain why it costs an arm and a leg to buy a cappuccino and why it's nearly impossible to purchase a decent used car.

The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run - or Ruin - an Economy

A provocative and lively exploration of the increasingly important world of macroeconomics, by the author of the bestselling The Undercover Economist. Thanks to the worldwide financial upheaval, economics is no longer a topic we can ignore. From politicians to hedge-fund managers to middle-class IRA holders, everyone must pay attention to how and why the global economy works the way it does.

Barking up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

By looking at what separates the extremely successful from the rest of us, we learn what we can do to be more like them - and find out, in some cases, why it's good that we aren't. Barking up the Wrong Tree draws on startling statistics and surprising anecdotes to help you understand what works and what doesn't, so you can stop guessing at success and start living the life you want.

Clinton Aukstolis says:"Comprehensive update to the science of success"

Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations

Every day we work hard to motivate ourselves, the people we live with, the people who work for and do business with us. In this way much of what we do can be defined as being motivators. From the boardroom to the living room, our role as motivators is complex, and the more we try to motivate partners and children, friends and coworkers, the clearer it becomes that the story of motivation is far more intricate and fascinating than we've assumed.

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

Have you ever wanted to learn a language or pick up an instrument, only to become too daunted by the task at hand? Expert performance guru Anders Ericsson has made a career of studying chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens. Peak condenses three decades of original research to introduce an incredibly powerful approach to learning that is fundamentally different from the way people traditionally think about acquiring a skill.

The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return

Harvard Business School professor Mihir Desai, in his last lecture to the graduating Harvard MBA class of 2015, took up the cause of restoring humanity to finance. With incisive wit and irony, his lecture drew upon a rich knowledge of literature, film, history, and philosophy to explain the inner workings of finance in a manner that has never been seen before. This book captures Desai's lucid exploration of the ideas of finance as seen through the unusual prism of the humanities.

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

Visionary physicist Geoffrey West is a pioneer in the field of complexity science, the science of emergent systems and networks. The term complexity can be misleading, however, because what makes West's discoveries so beautiful is that he has found an underlying simplicity that unites the seemingly complex and diverse phenomena of living systems, including our bodies, our cities, and our businesses.

Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time

In Leadership BS Jeffrey Pfeffer shines a bright light on the leadership industry, showing why it's failing and how it might be remade. He sets the record straight on the oft-made prescriptions for leaders to be honest, authentic, and modest; tell the truth; build trust; and take care of others. By calling BS on so many of the stories and myths of leadership, he gives people a more scientific look at the evidence and better information to guide their careers.

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds

Forty years ago Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred systematically when forced to make judgments about uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made Michael Lewis' work possible.

Being Human: Life Lessons from the Frontiers of Science

Understanding our humanity - the essence of who we are - is one of the deepest mysteries and biggest challenges in modern science. Why do we have bad moods? Why are we capable of having such strange dreams? How can metaphors in our language hold such sway on our actions? As we learn more about the mechanisms of human behavior through evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and other related fields, we're discovering just how intriguing the human species is.

Pre-Suasion: Channeling Attention for Change

The author of the legendary best seller Influence, social psychologist Robert Cialdini, shines a light on effective persuasion and reveals that the secret doesn't lie in the message itself but in the key moment before that message is delivered.

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

Former general Stanley McChrystal held a key position for much of the War on Terror, as head of the Joint Special Operations Command. In Iraq he found that despite the vastly superior resources, manpower, and training of the US military, Al Qaeda had an advantage because of its structure as a loose network of small, independent cells. Those cells wreaked havoc by always staying one step ahead, sharing knowledge with each other via high-tech communications.

Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked

Welcome to the age of behavioral addiction - an age in which half of the American population is addicted to at least one behavior. We obsess over our emails, Instagram likes, and Facebook feeds; we binge on TV episodes and YouTube videos; we work longer hours each year; and we spend an average of three hours each day using our smartphones.

Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success

Few things in life are more satisfying than beating a rival. We love to win and hate to lose, whether it's on the playing field or at the ballot box, in the office or in the classroom. In this bold new look at human behavior, award-winning journalist and Olympian Matthew Syed explores the truth about our competitive nature: why we win, why we don't, and how we really play the game of life.

Everything Is Obvious: Once You Know the Answer

Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO’s impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard? If you think the answers to these questions are a matter of common sense, think again.

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

This audiobook is about luck, or more precisely, how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. It is already a landmark work, and its title has entered our vocabulary. In its second edition, Fooled by Randomness is now a cornerstone for anyone interested in random outcomes.

The Leadership Gap: What Gets Between You and Your Greatness

When successful people begin to feel uncertain or challenged at work, the one thing they want to know most is why things are going wrong after they have gone right for so long. In The Leadership Gap, Lolly Daskal reveals the consequences highly driven, overachieving leaders face when they continue to rely on a skill set that has always worked for them, even when it is no longer effective.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Why do we do the things we do? More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful, but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: He starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs and then hops back in time from there in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

Stick with It: A Scientifically Proven Process for Changing Your Life - for Good

Whether it's absent-minded mistakes at work, a weakness for junk food, a smartphone addiction, or a lack of exercise, everyone has some bad habit or behavior that they'd like to change. But wanting to change and actually doing it - and sticking with it - are two very different things. Dr. Sean Young, an authoritative new voice in the field of behavioral science, knows a great deal about our habits - how we make them and how we can break them.

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

His work is cited by the world's best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic best seller - one of the most influential business books of all time - innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right - yet still lose market leadership. Christensen explains why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems. What should we do, or leave undone, in a day or a lifetime? How much messiness should we accept? What balance of new activities and familiar favorites is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not: computers, too, face the same constraints, so computer scientists have been grappling with their version of such problems for decades.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

With Give and Take, Adam Grant not only introduced a landmark new paradigm for success but also established himself as one of his generation's most compelling and provocative thought leaders. In Originals, he again addresses the challenge of improving the world but now from the perspective of becoming original: choosing to champion novel ideas and values that go against the grain, battle conformity, and buck outdated traditions. How can we originate new ideas, policies, and practices without risking it all?

Organizational Culture and Leadership: The Jossey-Bass Business & Management Series

Regarded as one of the most influential management books of all time, this fourth edition of Leadership and Organizational Culture transforms the abstract concept of culture into a tool that can be used to better shape the dynamics of organization and change. This updated edition focuses on today's business realities.

The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream

Since Alexis de Tocqueville, restlessness has been accepted as a signature American trait. Our willingness to move, take risks, and adapt to change have produced a dynamic economy and a tradition of innovation from Ben Franklin to Steve Jobs. The problem, according to legendary blogger, economist, and best-selling author Tyler Cowen, is that Americans today have broken from this tradition - we're working harder than ever to avoid change.

Publisher's Summary

In this groundbreaking work, Tim Harford shows us a new and inspiring approach to solving the most pressing problems in our lives. Harford argues that today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinions; the world has become far too unpredictable and profoundly complex. Instead, we must adapt. Deftly weaving together psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, physics, and economics, along with compelling stories of hard-won lessons learned in the field, Harford makes a passionate case for the importance of adaptive trial-and-error in tackling issues such as climate change, poverty, and the financial crisis.

What the Critics Say

“Tim Harford has made a compelling and expertly informed case for why we need to embrace risk, failure, and experimentation in order to find great ideas that will change the world. I loved the book.” (Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality)

“Tim Harford could well be Britain’s Malcolm Gladwell. An entertaining mix of popular economics and psychology, this excellently written book contains fascinating stories of success and failure that will challenge your assumptions. Insightful and clever.” (Alex Bellos, author of Here’s Looking at Euclid)

“This is a brilliant and fascinating book - Harford’s range of research is both impressive and inspiring, and his conclusions are provocative. The message about the need to accept failure has important implications, not just for policy making but also for people’s professional and personal lives. It should be required reading for anyone serving in government, working at a company, trying to build a career or simply trying to navigate an increasingly complex world.” (Gillian Tett, author of Fool’s Gold: The Inside Story of J.P. Morgan and How Wall St. Greed Corrupted Its Bold Dream and Created a Financial Catastrophe)

Adapt will be an influential book. I read lots of terrific books, and Harford's latest is certainly terrific, but very few books make a long-term difference in how we think. Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge, Ariely's Predictably Irrational, Taleb's The Black Swan, and Wu's Master Switch are all influential books. They all creep into conversations, inform policy choices, underlie institutional strategies, and shape careers.

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from John Maynard Keynes:“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”(Note: when Keynes was around, the ed tech profession did not yet exist, but if it did I think we would have been included amongst "economists and political philosophers").

Ideas rule the world. And books are the way that ideas take shape and spread. Therefore, books rule the world.

Adapt may get you thinking about your ability to adapt. Accept that you will fail, that your institution, your company, your department and your division will fail. What matters is how we learn from failure. Harford builds his theory of adaptation and failure by telling stories.

How did the U.S. Army turn the Iraq war around? (Short story … by Colonels on the ground risking careers by defying their civilian and military bosses, and engaging in counter-insurgent tactics). How have successful companies, from Google to Whole Foods, to W.L. Gore drive innovation and profits? (Answer: by creating non-hierarchical cultures that push authority and accountability to the edges).

All this may seem like familiar ground, and some of it has been well covered in Schulz's marvelous Being Wrong and Watt's Everything is Obvious (among others), but Harford brings these threads together into a clear set of ideas that are actionable in our professional lives and organizations.

Possibly, first half of book was full of great examples and approaches but second half became too much of a political statement for Carbon tax and did not follow throught with the main theme as much as the first half.

Would you recommend Adapt to your friends? Why or why not?

Only as a casual read and but stop at Carbon Tax section. You got 90% of the book at that point

How could the performance have been better?

Narrator needs to narrate. There was absolutely no need for alternate voices or a performance. Took away from the narration too much, were not that good and as an audible book his accent was often difficult to pick up on key words requiring a slight rewind at times.

Did Adapt inspire you to do anything?

One key point was made in the beginning that has resonated with me. The decision you make after a bad decision (or result) is often more damaging than the original. Excellent point in everything from golf to realtionships to business.

Especially since this is non-fiction I dearly wish the (British) narrator had not attempted an American accent for any quote from an American. He does the usual things Brits do when (poorly) imitating Americans, for example very hard Rs and super flat "a" sound.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Probably not. Lots of ideas and history. One could, though, especially on a long drive or other trip.

Any additional comments?

Overall I like the narration. I am a half-Brit and Anglophile so I enjoy the basic British accent. He keeps the story moving and interesting. The writing is good, but it is non-fiction so it helps to have a good story-teller keeping it lively and supporting the writing.

The book is based on one idea - success often comes from trial and error. There are anecdotes covering a wide range - business, healthcare, and charity work. At Google, employees are given time to experiment with new ideas. Although 80% of these ideas don't pan out, the 20% earns them huge profits. The book starts off slow and there is a chapter on military failures. I suggest starting on Chapter 3 where it has more relevance and then coming back to those chapters. There are also anecdotes about placing safeguards in the right places so that failures aren't disastrous. This is useful advice for industries like nuclear power generation and oil extraction.

Just like Anti-fragile, it's not about personal development. And, it doesn't contain any useful information.<br/><br/>It's a bunch of stories of failure and mistakes, with "they should have adapted" at the end.

What was most disappointing about Tim Harford’s story?

The lack of aplicable information to my daily life.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

If you like hearing stories of failure, with no actionable information or even anecdotes, then there are many of those.

The book is okay. Supposedly about how we need to adapt to situations and be willing to try with the risk of failure in order to succeed, but then the examples given seemed to go off on a tangent and while I liked the anecdotes, I had to stop and wonder a lot about "so what is he trying to convey here?" because he's not very clear about his point in a lot of these cases.

I didn't like the voice actor used in this. The British accent was a little difficult, though not a big issue (though I can see it being so for others)... but mostly my problem was with the pacing of his narration. He would switch between long drawled-out words and then a series of words rapidly read in succession, making it impossible to speed up the audio to get over the slower parts, and sometimes requiring a rewind to focus and catch what he was saying. His choice to do accents for the quoted texts was kind of... off-putting too. Dramatic performances are not needed nor desired in non-fiction texts....

I’ve read many books about adaptation including the ‘Righteous Mind’ and ‘That Used to Us’ to name two. Here the author goes through and give cases where individuals chose to adapt causing the end result to change. The author even references one of the two books I’ve referenced in their work.

Really this is a book you need to read as I don’t want to ruin it. In the end like the ‘Five Elements of Thinking’ I’ve found several things I can carry forward into my life. I recommend you read this book and listen to it to get the most from it as no review can never really express the book as they’re someone else’s perception on a book.

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure is a book full of interesting stories, about some curious characters that I've never heard of. It is an easy listening that stresses trial and error and complexity of problems.His 3 Principles- try new things/ ideas; make failure survivable; learn from your mistakes and adapt, and in the end, he gives the the forth principle: security (or delusion of security).